


Deserve Well At My Hands

by Crowgirl



Series: On the Strength of the Evidence [31]
Category: Grantchester (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Hands, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 00:19:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10819779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl
Summary: ‘But what? Didn’t expect to seemedoing it?’





	Deserve Well At My Hands

‘What are you doing?’ Geordie asks, buttoning his shirt and tucking the tails into his trousers.

Sidney glances up briefly. ‘What does it look like?’

‘I don’t know; that’s why I’m asking.’

Sidney smiles but doesn’t take his eyes off the swift movements of his hands. ‘Fixing my hands.’ He finishes applying a small bit of something that looks like a heavy lotion to each nail and begins briskly rubbing each one in turn with a thick cloth. It looks to Geordie something like what his mum used to clean silver.

He finishes buckling his belt and steps across to the chair where Sidney is sitting in front of the narrow, somewhat rickety dressing table. Geordie spares a moment to wish he’d been able to get them a nicer room -- there’s a distinctly unaired smell about this one and the carpet is ragged around the edges -- but what with Esme’s new school clothes, he and Cathy were right up against it for the month. And the Chief Constable had only grudgingly agreed to cover a room at all. He glances back at the bed -- ‘You’ll just have to bunk in together; we haven’t got it in the budget to get you two rooms.’ ‘No, sir. Thank you, sir. I’m sure we can make do, sir.’ -- and reassures himself that it’s neatly made-up, completely unrevealing. 

Geordie catches one of Sidney’s hands and presses a kiss to the back. ‘Didn’t notice anything wrong with them, myself.’

‘Nothing functional, certainly.’ Sidney glances up and looks back down so quickly Geordie can’t catch his expression.

‘So what is all this?’ Geordie picks up the small tin of lotion and tries to make out the label; it’s badly worn and all he can see is _**from Paris**_ in heavy black lettering. 

‘Jennifer gave it to me. When I went back to Cambridge after the war. She -- she thought I might find it useful.’ Sidney’s hands don’t pause in their steady movements; he’s finished rubbing the lotion off the nails of his left hand and has switched to his right. 

‘Well, that’s nice of her but it still doesn’t tell me what it _is.’_ Geordie unscrews the lid and sniffs: there’s lanolin, a dusty sort of perfume smell, and something that’s naggingly familiar and makes him think of sandpaper until he realises he’s remembering the smell of the emery boards Cathy keeps on her side of the dressing table.

‘Haven’t you ever watched Cathy do her nails?’ Sidney scowls at his pinky nail and gives it an unnecessarily hard scrubbing, enough to turn the skin of his knuckle pink with the friction of the edge of the cloth. 

‘Yes, but--’ Geordie puts the tin back and leans back against the edge of the table, folding his arms.

‘But what? Didn’t expect to see _me_ doing it?’ 

Geordie unfolds his arms in surprise at the bitterness in Sidney's tone. ‘What did I say?’

Sidney sighs and stuffs the cloth and lotion back into his worn leather toiletries bag, then catches Geordie’s closest hand. ‘Nothing.’ He presses a kiss to the center of Geordie’s palm, then clasps Geordie’s hand between both his own, looking up with that _open_ look on his face that never fails to make Geordie’s heart hurt a little. There’s something about it that makes him want to fold Sidney away somewhere safe and keep him there. 

‘When I came home -- I didn’t even realise I was doing it. I washed my hands all the time. I kept my nails so short they bled sometimes.’ Sidney pauses, letting himself take several slow, deliberate breaths and Geordie wonders if this is the first time he’s said these words aloud. ‘I got a couple bad infections one summer and Jenn -- well, it sounds daft, but she made me go to her manicurist.’ 

‘Doesn’t sound daft,’ Geordie says mildly. ‘There’s not much worse than an infected finger. You can’t do anything.’ 

Sidney’s hands tighten around his and he’s silent for a minute. ‘It -- having someone else -- deal with it -- I didn’t feel the need to -- do what I’d been doing. So Jenn bought me the kit so I wouldn’t have to be running to the hairdresser’s all the time.’

There are a lot of silences in that story, Geordie knows. But now -- when they’ll be late for court if they don’t leave in the next ten minutes -- is not the time to press. Instead, he turns his hand so Sidney’s fingers are splayed over the back of his wrist and pretends to examine the buffed gloss with a critical eye, rubbing his thumb over Sidney’s index finger nail. It’s smooth and slightly slick-feeling against his skin but really, he can’t tell much of a difference from how Sidney’s hands normally look; he supposes that’s the point. ‘Glad you don’t like that colored varnish stuff anyway. Esme’s bought herself a bottle and the smell’d drive you to drink.’ 

Sidney smiles at Geordie, a real smile this time, and stands up, crowding him back against the dressing table and making Geordie wish fervently that the trial was on in the _afternoon_ and not first thing in the bloody morning. Sidney trails a finger along the line of Geordie’s jaw and down the side of his throat to his collar. Geordie can smell the lingering scent of the lotion with the familiar tang of Sidney’s skin below that. Geordie swallows reflexively and Sidney smiles again then leans in to kiss him.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from _[Much Ado About Nothing](http://www.bartleby.com/70/1652.html)_.
> 
> All thanks to [Kivrin](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Kivrin) and [elizajane](http://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane) as usual!
> 
> It occurred to me that the afternoon of this piece may well be [Is As A Virtue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10963395).


End file.
